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The purpose of this paper is to provide a detailed analysis of the usage pattern of non‐revenue earning customers (NREC) who cause revenue churn in the company and are susceptible to churn in the near future. These NREC customers were analyzed to discern a pattern in their usage and to serve as proactive measure to prevent customer churn.

Data from a leading telecom service provider were analyzed. The company has around seven lakh consumer mobile users. Within the seven lakhs consumer mobile users around two lakh customers are active users, i.e. revenue earning customers. This group of active customers also consists of around 37,388 customers who move to dormant state (from revenue earning to non‐revenue earning) every month. These customers were analyzed to understand their susceptibility to churn.

Analysis of revenue dump data indicates consumers with overall usage revenue per minute greater than 75 paise (USD 0.01) and those with greater usage of value added services are susceptible to churn. Also based on the nature of calls, churn occurs with the subscribers making more calls to other networks rather than to the same network.

In a fiercely competitive market, service providers constantly focus on customer retention. The study has high importance as it helps to find out the customers who are likely to churn. This would help telecom companies create proactive rather than reactive strategies toward customer churn.

Earlier studies identified the reasons for customer churn and attributed the same to it. The authors propose that prior to customer churn there is a distinct shift in his/her usage pattern with the current service provider and this behavior is termed revenue churn. This revenue churn ultimately leads to customer churn from the network. This revenue churn is not explored much in detail in the literature.

The purpose of this paper is to go beyond satisfaction as an indicator of customer loyalty and propose a holistic model of service switching in a mobile internet setting. The model, which reflects both barriers and inducements of switching, is developed based on the “mooring” and “pull” concepts in the migration literature.

Focusing on Generation Y mobile internet subscribers, the study analyzed a total of 417 usable questionnaire responses. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was used to test the research model.

The results show that first, satisfaction and switching barriers (i.e. a focal firm’s marketing innovation initiatives, switching costs, inertia, and local network effects) are positively related to customer loyalty; second, switching barriers have a stronger influence on customer loyalty compared with satisfaction; third, switching inducements (i.e. competitors’ marketing innovation initiatives, alternative attractiveness, variety-seeking tendencies, and consumers’ susceptibility to social reference group influence) is negatively related to customer loyalty and the relationship is weaker when perceived switching barriers are high.

This study empirically validates multidimensional scales of switching barriers and inducements from a more nuanced perspective, and specifies them as reflective-formative type II models. This study is among the first to use opposing dimensions to measure switching barriers and its counterpart. Hence, it illustrates how the two contrasting mechanisms can coexist in the minds of mobile internet subscribers.

The great difficulties which attach to the fixing of legal standards of composition for food products have now to be grappled with by the Departmental Committee appointed by the Board of Agriculture to consider and determine what regulations should be made by the Board, under Section 4 of the Sale of Food and Drugs Act, 1899, with respect to the composition of butter. As we predicted in regard to the labours of the Milk and Cream Standards Committee, so we predict now that the Butter Committee will be unable to do more than to recommend standards and limits, which, while they will make for the protection of the public against the sale of grossly adulterated articles, will certainly not in any way insure the sale of butter of really satisfactory, or even of fair, composition. Standards and limits established by law for the purposes of the administration of criminal Acts of Parliament must of necessity be such as to legalise the sale of products of a most inferior character, to which the term “genuine” may still by law be applied as well as to legalise the sale of adulterated and sophisticated products so prepared as to come within the four corners of the law. It is, of course, an obvious necessity that official standards and limits should be established, and the Board of Agriculture are to be congratulated upon the manner in which they are endeavouring to deal with these extremely knotty problems; but it is important that misconception on the part of the public and the trade with respect to the effect of the regulations to be made should be as far as possible prevented. All that can be hoped for is that the conclusions at which the Committee may find themselves compelled to arrive will not be such as to place too high and too obvious a premium upon the sale of those inferior and scientifically‐adulterated products which are placed in such enormous quantities on the food market.

Chemistry as an applied science suffers from the fact that its necessarily close connection with various branches of industry is ill defined and generally very unsatisfactory in character. One result of this is that those who have made chemistry their profession find themselves more often than not in the position of having to subordinate their professional instincts to the temporary exigencies of some particular branch of trade and to find their professional status called in question and criticised by those who are not in the profession itself and who have no right to criticise.

An important report on the work carried out during the two years 1906–7 and 1907–8 by the Inspectors of Foods appointed by the Local Government Board has been drawn up by Dr. G. S. BUCHANAN, the Chief Inspector, and forms part of the report of the Medical Officer to the Board, Dr. ARTHUR NEWSHOLME, for the year 1907–8 (Appendix A, No. 10).

The difficulty of standardising the clinical diagnosis has led workers in the field of nutrition to suggest alternative methods. Thus, tables of average weights for each sex at specified ages and for particular heights have been frequently used in studies of nutrition, an arbitrary limit of 10 per cent.of the average being usually taken as separating the undernourished from those reasonably nourished. It is generally recognised, however, that, owing to the variation in body weight, even of persons of the same sex, age, and height, the use of these tables may, on the one hand, fail to pick out really undernourished individuals, and, on the other hand, may place those who are perfectly healthy in the category of undernourished. For this reason, therefore, various formulæ, based largely on the relationship of height and weight, have been proposed from time to time. The best‐known are as follows:—

The Society of the White Cross of Geneva appears to have been founded with the object of organising on an international basis the attempts that are being made at the present time in civilised countries to bring under control, and if possible to stamp out, certain abuses, frauds, and other injurious factors more or less existent in modern civilised life. Among the subjects to be dealt with are mentioned “les empoisonnements alimentaires,” and adulteration generally, and the principal part of the business of the International Congress which met at Geneva last year and whose second sitting has just ended in Paris, appears to have related to food questions. The objects aimed at by the society are, no doubt, excellent, but they are hardly likely to be attained if the procedure followed in certain respects at the Geneva and Paris Congresses is adopted in the future. Many of the questions brought before these Congresses were of a highly technical nature, and, for this reason, it was not only very desirable, but absolutely necessary that the matters under discussion should have been dealt with, so far as time allowed, by a thoroughly representative international body composed exclusively of scientific and legal experts of recognised position in their respective countries—that is to say, if the conclusions arrived at were to be taken as representing a serious expression of authoritative opinion. It does not appear that the conclusions and resolutions of these Congresses were arrived at by meetings constituted on these lines, and it is probably for this reason that very little, if any, impression has been produced by the gatherings referred to. The initial mistake appears to have been the admission of a number of people who were obviously only interested in the commercial aspects of the subjects dealt with, and who were sufficiently numerous and persistent to influence the meetings in directions favourable to what were declared to be the “requirements” of trade.

A survey of these records shows that while in a number of the larger factories work has been carried out under conditions likely to insure the production of sound and wholesome materials, in many others of this class the opposite has been the case. In a very large number of the smaller factories and food preparing places the conditions found were unsatisfactory in the extreme.

What proof have the public, independent of the assertions of the makers, that all the firms whose products are sold indifferently by the shopkeepers use only the best materials; or, indeed, that a large number of the articles sold are not mixtures more or less objectionable or fraudulent ? This, in effect, is the question put by a writer in a West of England newspaper, and it might be used as a text upon which to write a lengthy homily on the adulteration question and on the astonishing gullibility of the public. As a matter of fact the only evidence of the character and quality of food and other products, in regard to which there is no independent guarantee, is that which is afforded by the standing of the makers, and to some extent of the firms which offer them for sale. And this evidence cannot, under any circumstances, be looked upon as constituting proof. The startling allegations so commonly put forward by advertisers with respect to their wares, while they may be ineffective in so far as thinking people are concerned, must nevertheless be found pecuniarily advantageous since the expense involved in placing them under the eyes of the public would otherwise hardly be incurred. Many of these advertised allegations are, of course, entirely unjustifiable, or are incapable of proof. It may be hoped that the lavish manner in which they are set out, and their very extravagance, may, in time, result in producing a general effect not contemplated by the advertisers. In the meantime it cannot be too often pointed out that proof, such as that which is required for the satisfaction of the retailer and for the protection of the public, can only be obtained by the exercise of an independent control, and, in certain cases, by the maintenance of efficient independent inspection in addition, so that a guarantee of a character entirely different to that which may be offered, even by a firm of the highest eminence, may be supplied.

The Sanitary Committee of a certain County Council, strong with the strength of recent creation, have lately been animated by a desire to distinguish themselves in some way, and, proceeding along the lines of least resistance, they appear to have selected the Public Analyst as the most suitable object for attack. The charge against this unfortunate official was not that he is incompetent, or that he had been in any way negligent of his duties as prescribed by Act of Parliament, but simply and solely that he has the temerity to reside in London, which city is distant by a certain number of miles from the much favoured district controlled by the County Council aforesaid. The committee were favoured in their deliberations by the assistance of no less an authority than the “Principal” of a local “Technical School”;—and who could be more capable than he to express an opinion upon so simple a matter? This eminent exponent of scientific truths, after due and proper consideration, is reported to have delivered himself of the opinion that “scientifically it would be desirable that the analyst should reside in the district, as the delay occasioned by the sending of samples of water to London is liable to produce a misleading effect upon an analysis.” Apparently appalled by the contemplation of such possibilities, and strengthened by another expression of opinion to the effect that there were as “good men” in the district as in London, the committee resolved to recommend the County Council to determine the existing arrangement with the Public Analyst, and to appoint a “local analyst for all purposes.” Thus, the only objection which could be urged to the employment of a Public Analyst resident in London was the ridiculous one that the composition of a sample of water was likely to seriously alter during the period of its transit to London, and this contention becomes still more absurd when it is remembered that the examination of water samples is no part of the official duty of a Public Analyst. The employment of local scientific talent may be very proper when the object to be attained is simply the more or less imperfect instruction of the rising generation in the rudiments of what passes in this country for “technical education”; but the work of the Public Analyst is serious and responsible, and cannot be lightly undertaken by every person who may be acquainted with some of the uses of a test‐tube. The worthy members of this committee may find to their cost, as other committees have found before them, that persons possessing the requisite knowledge and experience are not necessarily indigenous to their district. Supposing that the County Council adopts the recommendation, the aspirations of the committee may even then be strangled in their infancy, as the Local Government Board will want to know all about the matter, and the committee will have to give serious and valid reasons in support of their case.